Lonnie,
I removed the gauges from the housings.
Then, I carefully sanded the faces of each gauge, trying not to hurt/bend the needles (the speedometer needle can be removed, if you are a careful and a brave man).
Then, I covered the needles and painted the gauge-faces flat-black.
Then, I put a piece of newspaper over each gauge face and carefully poked the needles through the newspapers (I used Op-Ed pages of the newspaper; I probably should have used the funnies/cartoons pages).
Then, I spray painted the needles bright white.
Then, I applied the decal to the painted gauge faces.
While the paint was drying on the gauges, I painted the inside on the gauge housings (a light green color that I found in Ace Hardware - an excellent match to the original light green on the inside of the 1954 gauge housing). I'll look for the brand and color code, if you are interested.
I found that the speedometer decal was the hardest to properly apply to the prepared/painted speedometer-gauge face.
If you wait for Denny to work on his 54 truck, he will probably post a much better way to do this (I am an amateur - Denny is the pro).
